Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Donations to our collection are always welcome, and it is not uncommon for us to receive items that add great value to our collection -- your county's heritage. We recently received a large panoramic photograph of a large group of school children, teachers, and drivers standing in front of the New Richmond School building in 1914. Some school hacks (Coal Creek Township Schools) are parked in the background. The school was on East Washington Street, next to the New Richmond Christian Church. Although both these buildings are gone today, we intend to save the image for future generations.

Scanning this panoramic photograph for our image database proved to be a challenge because the image was over 2.5 feet long and some 10 inches tall. We had to scan it in five sections and then "stitch" together the sections to make one image. Using Windows 7 with its Live Photo Gallery made this once difficult chore very easy because Photo Gallery has a feature that can recognize overlapping images in order to make one image out of it. All five sections blended well with one another except for the first section on the left -- Photo Gallery could not recognize that section as part of the panoramic photo because we simply could not seem to scan it at the same size as the other four sections (so we finally ended up attaching that section manually, as is obvious). But at least for now we are able to share with the community a photo that few have seen before.

Are you curious to see a few more images we have, taken of the same building around the same time? You can find several on our image database, including: